Letters, Ashes, and Whispers
by celeste9
Summary: Remus, haunted and broken. He tries, but never quite follows through.


_A/N: Spoilers through book 5._

Two weeks after James and Lily died, after Peter died, after Sirius… Remus composed a letter to baby Harry. He wrote about stories from when they were at Hogwarts together, about James and Sirius playing pranks, about the two of them helping Peter so they could be Animagi and be with Remus when he transformed (and if it had been strange to have friends at all, it had been even stranger to have friends who cared that much). Cheering Quidditch in the stands with Peter, long afternoons sitting by the lake, smuggled butterbeer into the dormitory, late night conversations about girls or about Snape being a git.

He wrote about beautiful, clever Lily whom half the boys in the castle had asked out at one time or another, Lily who'd thought James a prat for years, prefect Lily he'd gotten so close to fifth year (he didn't mention how long her eyelashes were, how her red hair shone in the firelight, how sometimes he'd thought about kissing her, how sometimes he'd wished he was a Slytherin so he could have had something to blame his traitorous thoughts on). Lily who'd smiled and danced and laughed at her wedding.

Shy little Peter who had started following them around first year and had never stopped. It had been so easy to make him laugh, and he'd been so eager always to be included, to be a part of everything, to stick close even when he seemed about to fall behind. Late nights helping him with his essays, trying to make him forget harsh words from professors at his nervous (he wasn't stupid) bumblings in class. Peter needing, wanting, always wanting and somehow always afraid to ask.

Often too clever for his own good Sirius, with his creative, ingenious, amusing but mad and sometimes dangerous plans, with his dark hair and dark eyes and giggling girls in his wake. Sirius who'd run away from home because he'd hated his family. Sirius who'd fumed when Regulus had been put into Slytherin even though he'd seen it coming, who'd tried not to let anyone see how he'd done his best to look after his little brother anyway, who'd hidden his tears and anger both when Death Eater Regulus had been killed.

James flying through the air as though he'd been born on a broomstick, his hair looking windblown even when he was on the ground (Remus had once tried to count the number of times James rumpled it in a day, but had given up by breakfast). He'd always remembered to bring Remus his schoolwork in the infirmary after the full moon, when the thought never would've even crossed the minds of the other two. Head Boy James who had finally gotten his act together and won the girl.

Remus did not write about getting James well and truly pissed the night before his wedding-- that's a story for when Harry's older-- or maybe never. He did write about waiting at St. Mungo's with Sirius and Peter till James had run out shouting _It's a boy! It's a boy! _He wrote about how tiny baby Harry had had wisps of wayward dark hair even then, and big green eyes like his mother.

Then he wrote about fear, death and betrayal and Voldemort, because Harry deserved to know the _whole_ story, that his parents had died because their best friend turned out to be more like his family than they'd thought. Not all the wizards and witches who turned dark were in Slytherin-- not by a longshot. Harry deserved to know, no matter what Dumbledore said about waiting till it was time. There hadn't been enough time for James and Lily.

By the time he finished writing, his hand was cramped and the words had gotten slurred together and difficult to make out. He'd tried to weave tales, make people poor little Harry (and didn't _that _sound patronizing) would never really know come alive again, make them come off the page in strong images as well as they could. He reread it, his fist clenched so tightly his fingernails dug into his skin leaving little moon-- _half_-moon-- indentations, and tried to ignore the way the parchment had started to blur before his eyes. Tried not to think of the mockery it was, to reduce flesh and blood to mere scribbles and think it was enough, would _ever _be enough.

He tossed it into the fire and watched until the last bits of parchment had crumbled to ash.

* * *

He wrote letters to Mrs. Pettigrew, sometimes, over the years, because it was easier than going to see her. Visiting her meant forcing smiles at moving pictures that were nothing close to the real thing, shutting his eyes to block out the tiny box on the mantel next to the Order of Merlin, First Class, and a large framed portrait of a grinning waving young Peter, averting his face when Mrs. Pettigrew's eyes grew bright and pretending he didn't notice the tremor in her voice. Visiting her meant drudging up the past, retelling old stories that only hurt to remember. She wanted to remember her son as he had been, the laughing cheerful plump little Gryffindor, but remembering Peter meant remembering everything that could no longer be. It was better to forget, when he could-- which wasn't often, not when they all remained veiled in his mind just out of reach.

He had also written to Dumbledore, once-- no, twice. Simple short letters revealing nothing.

_How is he?_

The replies always came quickly, and were just as short.

_He's fine. He's safe._

Remus sometimes wondered whether being safe actually translated into being fine, and thought probably it didn't, not necessarily.

But he did nothing.

* * *

When Remus saw Harry on the train to Hogwarts, at first he'd thought he was dreaming, that he was still sleeping, that he'd wandered into a memory of thirteen-year old James. Then he'd blinked and looked into Lily's eyes, and cast away the images of a ghostly, jovial James.

_Don't be such a bore, Moony--_

Harry had been so starved for love, so eager for the tiniest scrap of _anything _about his parents, it had been almost painful to be near him. Painful even to see him, to remember that he _wasn't _James. But Harry had seemed to need Remus's companionship, needed his help and his words, needed him almost as though he had realized Remus was a link to his family, and Remus had clung to him. Clung to Harry as a reminder of the past, even if it did sometimes hurt. It was a better hurt than visiting poor old Mrs. Pettigrew, whose link with the world grew more precarious with every passing year. He'd loved the way Harry smiled, wanted to see his face brighten (as it surely would) when he heard how like he was to his father, how his eyes were his mother's. But Remus couldn't tell him that.

Getting close to Harry, Remus sometimes wondered if he hadn't been making a mistake all these years.

And Harry had had their _map, _their map they'd charmed with complex spells to make sneaking around the castle easier and for a lark both. He'd never thought to see it again, hadn't given a passing thought to it in years. After Remus confiscated it, it had sat shoved back in a drawer for days, while he tried hard to ignore it till it had been too much, till he'd locked his office door with a muttered word and flick of his wand and taken it out. Spread it out on his desk and watched the spidery lettering spring up from the old parchment till it had seemed to Remus he could hear the voices in his head, perfect replicas of themselves as teenagers.

_Mr. Moony would like to inquire why exactly he seems to have become so dull in his old age._

But he hadn't even needed the map to hear the voices. Not with Sirius on the loose, Sirius in the castle even.

_Not _Sirius, not Sirius from school, not Padfoot, but _Black._

Sirius the murderer. Sirius trying to kill Harry, to kill Harry like he'd as good as killed Harry's parents, Sirius who was an unregistered Animagus and maybe Snape _was _right, that Remus was helping Sirius into the castle. His silence when he could have given information to lead to Sirius's capture was close enough to giving him the keys to the castle that it didn't matter.

_The dog suits me, don't you think?_

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to think about how they must have believed _he'd _been the traitor, he'd been the one passing information, the reason he hadn't even been considered for the secret keeper, the reason he hadn't even known all that was going on in James and Lily's last days.

_It's nothing, Remus, we're fine, we're working on it. Don't worry so much!_

He looked at the map too often now. He was trying to live in the past when it was already gone, a past that hadn't been what it had seemed anyway. But they _had _been Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. Remus, Peter, Sirius, and James. Those were their words on the parchment, their magical imprints, _them. _Remus the prefect _(werewolf)_ and James the Quidditch player turned Head Boy and Sirius the--

Sirius who maybe-- who maybe hadn't been the traitor after all? _Peter Pettigrew, _it said on the map. _Peter Pettigrew. _And the map never lied-- Remus should know. If it was true-- how _could _it be? Sirius… Sirius had killed all those Muggles, there were witnesses, Mrs. Pettigrew had been sent his finger…

But all there had been was a finger… Ron had a _rat…_

He wouldn't know if Sirius hadn't actually been the secret keeper, would he?

But Peter… dear Peter, a Death Eater, a spy? He supposed it wasn't any harder to believe it of Peter than it had been to believe it of Sirius. And he had. It had nearly killed him, but he'd believed it.

Just as Sirius had believed it of Remus. Some friends they'd turned out to be.

But that wasn't fair. Fear can make you believe a lot of things, and maybe they could set it right finally.

Or at least… set it as right as it could be, now.

* * *

That summer, Remus had started another letter to Harry. Only this time, he only got so far as a drop of black ink dripped from the end of his quill onto the parchment. Why would Harry want to hear from him when he could hear from Sirius? After all, it was _Sirius_ James and Lily had chosen as Harry's godfather. All Remus was now was Harry's old professor. He'd been nothing but a stand-in, a temporary replacement, and Harry had the real thing now.

Or at least the person who came closest to the real thing Harry could ever have.

So he rolled the parchment back up to save for some more worthy purpose and ignored the whisper that said _so you're just going to abandon him now?_

Since he was ignoring it, he didn't have to wonder why the voice sounded like Lily.

* * *

During Harry's fifth year, Remus knew that Sirius was confusing Harry with James. The signs were hard to miss, especially as Remus had done the same thing himself.

It was difficult not to.

It wasn't only the face or even the Quidditch. It was the brightness and the recklessness, the rule-breaking and the trouble-making, the courage and the confidence.

But Harry _wasn't _James. He shunned the spotlight even as he continued to garner more attention, and compassion he got from Lily. His feud with Draco Malfoy was much like James's with Snape, but Harry never felt the need to hex people just to show he could. He'd had to grow up so much faster-- he didn't have the luxury James had had, to spend his childhood actually being a child, to live outside of fear with the abandon of a teenager who thinks he's going to live forever.

When Sirius said James would've thought it a lark to sneak to Hogsmeade as Padfoot, he was right. At fifteen, he would've loved it.

But Harry at fifteen was an altogether different matter.

Remus knew, deep down, that Sirius realized that, too. But Sirius had spent over a decade in Azkaban for a crime he hadn't committed (as much as he may have blamed himself for it). Sirius was more unhinged than Remus cared to think about, or to admit. It was comfortable to think of Harry as James, to remember when times were better, when their friends weren't all dead or traitors. Maybe it wasn't fair to Harry, when Sirius sometimes acted more like a friend than the father Harry so craved.

But Remus was in no position to condemn the behavior of others.

* * *

Once more Remus attempted to write a letter to Harry. After the debacle at the Department of Mysteries, after Bellatrix Lestrange murdered Sirius. After Dumbledore told Harry everything he should have years ago, some things Remus didn't even know (what _was _in that prophecy?).

But as he stared down at the blank parchment, he found there were no adequate words. No words of comfort or understanding, no words for what Sirius had meant to them both. Remus was intelligent, Remus was a scholar, but he wasn't a poet. He had plenty of words and even wit, but no true eloquence. Nothing that wouldn't ring hollow compared to the burst of life Sirius had been.

He wanted to tell Harry that… that he wasn't alone, that there were still people who loved him and cared about him, that even though Sirius was-- had been-- Harry's godfather, Remus felt… Remus could…

Perhaps it was the years of isolation, the separation that came from being a werewolf and from having all your friends dead or gone. Maybe it was because Remus _hadn't _been named Harry's godfather, or maybe it was the reason why that was so.

He slumped over the desk, head in his hands, and tried not to think of Harry. He searched his mind for echoes of laughter, dark hair and a cloud of red, the sounds of four sets of footprints, human and not.

Remus waited for the whispers to start, the ghostly remnants of his past, but everything was silent.

He didn't notice when the wetness formed on his cheeks, or when it stopped.


End file.
